Hurdle model of price discrimination as applicable to voter registration

In economic theory, the hurdle model of price discrimination is used by monopolists who want to charge different prices to different consumers in order to extract as much consumer surplus out of consumers as possible. The model works in the following way:

Some consumers are willing to pay a high price for a given product, whereas other consumers will not purchase the product unless the price is lower. This is due to the fact that different consumers' income elasticities are different. If a firm has to sell at one constant price, it will undoubtedly lose much of the consumer surplus to be extracted. Instead, smart monopolies impose a hurdle on consumers.

A hurdle is something that imposes only a negligible cost (time and monetary) on the consumers who jump it, yet forces the most elastic consumers to show themselves, and gives a discount to the jumpers. I give a few examples below:

Firstly, in the airlines industry, the hurdle is flying on weekends. Most people do not want to spend the weekend on an airplane, so they buy weekday tickets at the normal going rate. The travelers with the most sensitive income elasticities, however, will choose to travel in the weekends at a lower price. In the clothing industry, the hurdle is items with some artificial cosmetic imperfection. In the publishing industry, the hurdle is the more expensive hardcover edition appears in bookstands much earlier than the cheaper softcover edition.

A good hurdle is somewhat difficult to jump over (otherwise everybody would get the discount price) but the consumers who most want to jump over it are able to do so at negligible cost.

The economics of human behaviour tells us that most people are too lazy to bother jumping over hurdles. For example, the difficulty of filling out forms puts many people off from getting a tax rebate. For another example, many people do not ask for discounts even if the store they are shopping in has a sign saying "Ask for our special low price" because of the embarrassment of asking.

It is clear, therefore, that hurdles have at least some amount of success in keeping away all but the most elastic consumers from the discount prices.

I think that the hurdle model can be used profitably in voter registration applications.

My reason for using the model in this context is because I feel less people should be allowed to vote. I feel that over-politicisation of a nation is a bad thing; excessive involvement in the political process, in my opinion, is not optimal. I say the above because of two reasons. Dan Boudreaux writes that “involvement” in the political sphere is a huge opportunity cost – one could be doing something worthwhile in one’s private life. Involvement in politics, to Boudreaux, is a false hope. Bryan Caplan writes that voters are irrational, and do not vote with even their own – never mind the whole nation’s – interests at heart. Voters, Caplan, argues, “are worse than ignorant; they are, in a word, irrational – and vote accordingly”.

What is the solution? Boudreaux suggests simply staying out of politics. Caplan has more radical solutions: he wants tests for voter competency, and wants to give highly educated people more votes.

But these solutions are impractical. Merely telling people to stay out of politics will not work. Caplan’s suggestions won’t go down very well in a democratic society.

I suggest targeting voter turnout, making it as low as one can manage. To make voter turnout low, I suggest imposing a significant hurdle on voter registration. I propose that voter registration be made a tedious and difficult process, so that only those who have an extraordinary keen inclination to vote are allowed to do so. A further hurdle of making the voting process as difficult as possible (for example, having elections on weekdays, in inconvenient places, etc.) should reduce voter turnout by a huge amount.

I believe that imposing these hurdles will benefit the nation quite substantially. With these hurdles in place, we shall see elections where only people who really care about the political process (that is, the people who are not ignorant and irrational) vote, with all the noise eliminated.